Right versus Left: Bouncing Back by Linda Graham .

The right hemisphere processes our experiences holistically: for example, we recognize someone’s face all at once rather than adding up individual perceptions of the eyes, nose, lips, and other features to make a whole.

It processes any situation as a gestalt, the big picture, automatically.

Because of its extensive neural connections with the limbic system in the lower brain the source of our most primitive emotions the right hemisphere is sometimes referred to as our “emotional brain.”

It is the seat of the sense of self who we know ourselves to be in relation to the world and the seat of our common humanity.

In contrast, the left hemisphere processes experience logically (for example, by identifying cause and effect), linearly (by evaluating one piece of data after another in sequence), and through language.

(The verbal processing and speech centers are located on the left side of the brain.) The left hemisphere matures in the developing brain significantly later than the right and so it has fewer neural connections with the limbic system than the “emotional” right does.

The left hemisphere has been dubbed the rational side of the brain: its massive powers of analysis, judgment, and planning are what have made science and civilization possible.